These "As Seen On TV" Cooking Products Live Rent-Free In My Mind, So I'm Genuinely Curious If You'd Actually Buy Them (Or If They Just Make You Giggle)
"Stop having a boring tuna; stop having a boring life."
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that the cookware infomercials of the last...oh, 25 years or so...were as generation-defining as they are oddly comforting. Am I right, or am I right?
I've gathered a bunch of cooking-focused, As Seen On TV products that, quite honestly, live in my head rent-free. I have some major thoughts on whether or not I think they're worthwhile investments or just giggle-worthy content...but what I really want to know is what YOU think about them. Would you actually buy them? (I'm all ears!)
1.Let's kick things off with the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie — a product that I, as a very small child, wanted my parents to buy more than anything in the entire world...a product that taught us ALL to just (say it with me): SET IT! AND! FORGET IT!
2.Time for another infomercial classic: the George Foreman Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine! It's quintessential '90s goodness, but they actually still exist today...albeit much sleeker. I mean, grilling a burger from BOTH sides?! Pure innovation.
3.Do you love pasta? Can you simply not stand the process of filling up a pot of water and bringing it to a boil? If this is you, the Microwave Pasta Boat — from the Cathy Mitchell Cinematic Universe of infomercial kitchen products — was made for you. (Not gonna lie: Watching the boiling water trickle out of the built-in strainer tickles my brain in the best way possible.)
4.Forget organic — it's all about OrGREENic! TBH, Orgreenic walked so allllll the other ceramic nonstick pans these days could run, and I blame them for making people think they could ~blow their eggs off their nonstick pans~ — even without butter or oil. If you know, you know.
5.Moving back to Ronco, we've got the ever-fascinating Ronco Food Dehydrator. Suck the water out of anything your heart desires, from grapes to meat or even flowers!
6.Next up, it's the Jack LaLanne Power Juicer that promised to help us "look and feel years younger!" Did it actually? TBD. But I'd happily watch these two juice anything (and everything) that could possibly be juiced.
7.To go super old school, we've got the original Snackmaster. It's...a sandwich press! But it's a sandwich press that can make PIZZA POCKETS with nothing more than white bread, sauce, and cheese...see first 30 seconds below. Confusingly, there were also products like the Snackster and Super Snacker, and yes, they all did the same thing...but I have a soft spot in my heart for the Cathy Mitchell version ❤️.
8.It's the "#1 infrared cooking device in the world," and it's possibly the only infrared cooking device in the world! It's the NuWave Oven, and it cooks chicken breasts from "frozen to fabulous" in only 13 minutes! I, for one, have always been skeptical.
9.Miracle Blade Knives were ALL the rage at one time, but I was mostly just so jealous of the "real" people that used them to cut pineapples in half on TV. Did it inspire Fruit Ninja? Possibly. Regardless, am I alone in thinking these look scary as HELL?!
10.Made with a "natural mineral" (that let gasses escape, which would otherwise "cause food to rot..."), Debbie Meyer Green Bags were — and still are — simply fascinating to me. Like, IS it the way to keep your produce from spoiling? (If you've tried these, LMK.)
11.I want to say that my aunt once bought the Perfect Bacon Bowl. That said, I'm not sure if my uncertainty is because I tried it once and wanted to forget about it forever, or if it's just because I really, REALLY wanted one. Anyway, yeah, this just makes bowls out of bacon in your oven. Nifty!
12.Back in the Cathy Mitchell Cinematic Universe, we've got a ~cookbook~ that will haunt me for the rest of my days: Dump Dinners. The name? Horrific. But would I low-key eat basically every one of the recipes in this infomercial? You betcha!
13.Ron Popeil (yes, the guy behind a truly wild number of these products) first introduced the Veg-O-Matic in the '60s. In fact, you can see an original model in the literal Smithsonian! That's cool and all, but I think the competition at 1:15 in the infomercial below is even cooler — shout out to the mom literally throwing an onion against the sharp blades of a mandoline!
14.I always forget that the Magic Bullet was once an infomercial classic. Truthfully, I could watch these hosts chat with their fake "guests" and make smoothies for them all day. Any morning I'd wake up at 3 a.m. to see these two churning out anything imaginable in their Magic Bullets was a perfect morning, IMO.
15.Have you ever had a craving for a cupcake that's 25 TIMES larger than a standard cupcake?! I, personally, have not! But if YOU have, they practically made the Big Top Cupcake for you. Need I say more?
16.My personal favorite infomercial of all time, the Slap Chop, still brings me peak comfort — that is, when I can successfully forget about the fact that its spokesperson went to jail. I want to slap! My! Troubles! Away!!! Will I ever actually get one, though? TBD.
17.The Popeil Pasta Maker promised the ability to make "thousands and thousands" of different types of pastas. As someone who is simply unsure of whether or not there are even THOUSANDS of pasta shapes out there...I am cautiously intrigued.
18.The Chef Wizard (part of the CMCU) soothes me in a way I can't quite explain. Beyond the fact that it's a whisk, pair of tongs, and spatula, the way that it is able to pick up a single hard boiled egg and gently ~wrap around it~ is peak comfort. Am I alone here?
19.We're reaching the final few here! The FoodSaver is by no means a little-known product, but thinking back to those old, 1 a.m. infomercials before it became super popular is pretty much as nostalgic as it gets. The host here calls herself a "freshness fanatic," and honestly, aren't we all?
20.Listen, the infomercial for the Xpress Redi-Set-Go gets me every time. First of all: Iconic name. Second of all: Cathy Mitchell instructs us that you can make fried chicken in it using cereal crumbs — and "any type of cereal crumbs" at that. Lucky Charms fried chicken, here I come!
22.Finally, we've got an oldie but a goodie: the Rocket Chef Food Processor. It's a manual food processor that chops up food with the power of EIGHT knives — and if reading that isn't enough for you, I encourage you to scrub through the infomercial below and find the moment where the host goes full Edward Scissorhands. Nightmare material.
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